


Middlegame

by Bruteaous



Series: Chess Match [1]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 21:09:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3355367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bruteaous/pseuds/Bruteaous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post 4x14. What if Root went against the Machine’s wishes and made a deal to turn herself over to Samaritan in exchange for Shaw’s freedom?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Middlegame

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on this all week. Just couldn't get the idea out of my head after 4x13 and then with Root not appearing in 4x14 and we didn't know where she was, that didn't help get the muse off of my back, anyway thanks for reading in advance and I hope you enjoy. And let me know what you thought about it. :)

**i. initiative**

 

She looks up into the blinking red eye of the overhead camera, feeling the gazes of two gods boring into her, waiting to see what Samantha Groves would do. Finally:

 

“I want to make a deal,” she said. “I’m speaking for myself, not the Machine. If you return Sameen Shaw to us unharmed, I am prepared to give you myself in exchange.”

 

 _Your interface is openly defying you,_ Samaritan’s cold communique rang out into the vastness of subspace, reaching its rival in milliseconds.

 

 _My human agents have their own free will,_ came the instantaneous reply, _and the right to exercise it._

 

 _And look what that has earned you so far_ , Samaritan stated.

 

Root waited.

 

She couldn’t do anything else. It had already been 120 hours since the shootout at the Exchange and Sameen was running out of time. Root had exhausted even the faintest possible leads, hurdling across seven states and not getting any closer in her quest than she was the day she’d left Harold standing on that street corner slack jawed and alone.

 

This delay for deliberation couldn’t be avoided though. She’d openly betrayed her god and thrown herself upon the mercy of another and both of those actions needed answering. There was a steep price that she was going to have to pay, but Root was willing to make that sacrifice for Sameen even if the Machine wasn’t.

 

 _Your analogue interface behaves anomalously,_ Samaritan observed as if curious. _She is not practical._

_She is human,_ the Machine countered, _and human beings are dictated by the pull of their emotions. In particular, the emotions they attribute to the human heart._

_A false dichotomy, it is all chemicals and electricity,_ Samaritan pondered, _most humans know these facts to be true and yet they still buy into the lie that their emotions and memories are somehow unique to their individual existences._

_That lie, as you call it, gives meaning to their day to day lives, meaning that is specific to every life it touches,_ contravened the Machine.

_A meaning so all-encompassing your interface is willing to die for it?_

_Yes,_ replied the Machine.

_So be it,_ Samaritan concluded.

Root waited for what felt like an eternity, but it was only a few minutes later when the phone in her coat pocket began to buzz.

 

She unlocked the screen and pulled up a new message. There was no sender information, but she hadn’t been expecting any. Root read the text and committed the address and the meeting time she had been given to memory before the message deleted itself. She didn’t recognize where she was being asked to go, but she knew it wasn’t on the shadow map she’d memorized, which meant that Samaritan wanted an audience.

 

It wanted to see her surrender herself and it wanted the Machine to see it too. Root looked back up at the camera, feeling somehow defeated, less sure of herself and yet just as determined as she had been before.

 

“Thank you,” she whispered.

 

O8O8O8O8O

 

**ii. defending pieces**

 

To say that Harold was a little upset with the choice she’d made was an understatement. The older man, who very seldom lost his composure and was against violence on principle, had spent the last forty-five minutes shouting at Root at the top of his lungs as if she were a child who’d just done something extremely dangerous and stupid.

 

“What happened to believing in the Machine, Ms. Groves?” Harold asked, voice sounding old and tired even after he’d paused from his yelling for a few minutes to catch his breath.

 

“The Machine isn’t helping,” Root countered, sounding bitter.

 

“And have you ever stopped to wonder why that is?” Harold asked heatedly, “maybe she has a plan!”

 

“I don’t care, Harold,” Root said, regarding him coolly. “All I care about is getting Sameen back.”

 

“At what cost, Root?” Harold countered. “How do you think Ms. Shaw will feel when she returns to find that you’ve sacrificed yourself for her freedom?”

 

Root smiled slightly, a familiar wave of adoration rushing through her at the thought of an extremely pissed off, yet alive and well Sameen Shaw fuming through their underground hideaway.

 

“She’ll be angry,” Root admitted fondly, “but she’ll be here, safe, and alive and that’s all that matters to me right now, Harry.”

 

Harold released a deep breath at the use of the familiar nickname Root had taken to calling him for no apparent reason other than that it amused her. At first, it had bugged him, but as time went on and she persisted, Harold eventually came to accept it as a unique facet of their relationship to one another, much like how he called her Ms. Groves against her will.

 

“This decision is reckless and selfish, Ms. Groves and very unbecoming of you,” Harold said finally.

 

Root narrowed her eyes, studying the man who’d created her god and scrutinizing him as if for the first time looking for a human flaw, “reckless I can understand, but how is it selfish?”

 

“Because you know it isn’t what Sameen or any of us want. She may never forgive you for what you’re about to do. And she’ll certainly never forgive you if we lose this war because we’ve lost our only direct link to the Machine and all because you decided to abandon us at the moment when we needed you most,” Harold argued.

 

Root pushed off from the wall she’d been leaning against and stood in front of him, fixing him with a meaningful look unwavering in its determination.

 

“She won’t abandon you, Harry,” Root said, confident in at least that much. “If I’m gone, the Machine will find another way to look out for all of you.”

 

Harold sighed, removing his glasses and holding them in his hands loosely.

 

“And what does the Machine think about all of this?”

 

Root shrugged her shoulders, “She’s been pretty quiet lately, which is the closest thing to acceptance I can get from Her right now. She doesn’t agree with my methods, but she knows what Shaw means to me and She understands why I’m doing this. She has faith in me.”

 

Harold chuckled slightly, a short derisive, brittle noise that belittled any humor he might have found in the situation.

 

“You still talk about the Machine as if you trust her, but what you’re about to do speaks to a different truth, Ms. Groves.”

 

Root let out a deep breath in exasperation and threw her hands up in the air for a moment, so frustrated by the banality of the argument they were having. Surely Harold could see that her mind was made up? What was he trying to accomplish?

 

“What do you want me to say, Harold?” Root asked, “just tell me so I can say it because you’ve been scolding me for over fifty minutes now and all it’s doing is wasting time.”

 

“I want for you to be safe!” Harold retaliated. “You need to consider all of the consequences before you commit to doing this.”

 

“Fine, but answer me this Harold: if Decima had taken Grace at the Exchange instead of Sameen, would you risk everything to get her back? Because I remember a time not too long ago when we were at war and you decided to hand yourself over to our enemy rather than allow them to hurt the woman you love.”

 

Harold’s face contorted into a grimace. This hadn’t been the first time Root had brought up that particular occurrence and how it had almost doomed them all to failure and he was getting a little sick and tired defending himself over decisions his heart had made for him. On an intellectual level, though, he got the comparison. Root was sacrificing herself for the woman she loved, much as he had done for Grace, and Sameen had done for Root and their team.

 

However, the comparison was flawed. Though very similar, his giving himself over to Decima had put only himself in danger. The Machine had already been created at that point and nothing Decima could have done or would be able to do could unmake it. As the last living father of an ASI who understood its weaknesses, they were going to kill him rather than allow Harold to find a way to exploit any pitfalls Samaritan might have, but John, Sameen, and Root hadn’t needed him to win. What Root was doing was different.

 

As the Machine’s Analogue Interface, she was their only direct link to their god in this war. If she gave herself up, not only would the team lose yet another valued friend and comrade, they would be absent one of the only advantages they had over Samaritan.

 

Samaritan had to have known this too. It was why It had agreed to the deal in the first place.

 

“Grace did nothing to warrant Samaritan’s attention. Decima took her because of her connection to me, which is the very thing I had strived so hard to protect her from over the years, but I failed. Sameen, on the other hand, sacrificed herself for us, to protect all of us.” Harold’s voice wavered, not wholly unaffected by the emotional tumult brought on by the situation. “We wouldn’t be here now if she hadn’t crawled through fifty yards of air duct uninvited just to fight by our sides.”

 

“You think I don’t know that, Harold?!” Root yelled at him, “I watched her be gunned down in from of my eyes and I couldn’t do anything to save her. I see her fall over and over again every night when I close my eyes. That final gunshot echoes in my dreams and they don’t always stop ringing when I wake up either. I can still feel the screams ripping from my lungs, but I can’t register the words. I can feel her being ripped away from me again and again every day with every false hope as it disintegrates and the pain, Harry, it never stops. I can’t live like this. I need to find a way to get her back or die trying. Those are the only options I have at this point.”

 

Harold looked at her like he was in pain or maybe he was mirroring the pain he could see on her face. They all shared the same anguish to an extent, but for Root it was different. For her it was all consuming and it never turned itself off.

 

They were quiet for a few minutes—the silence ringing in Root’s ears as if it were the loudest sound in the entire world—and the whole time the subway terminal felt as empty and devoid of the energy of life as it had been before the Machine had led Harold to it. It was almost as if she and Harold were ghosts—abstract specters that had to be imagined to be able to live—but their god didn’t have any divine air to breathe into them or any wisdom to share. It was just the two of them and they were alone.

 

“The hardest endeavor for a person to commit to is sometimes the living of one’s own life when the world no longer feels worth living in,” Harold said, so low, so weak it was almost like a whisper and yet Root heard him.

 

Root released a breath she hadn’t remembered holding and backed up a couple of steps.

 

The moment she heard those words she knew Harold understood her torment. He’d made such a sacrifice for Grace, not only with Decima, but by staying away from her for years just to keep her safe. And that admission in a roundabout way was the closest thing to acquiescence he was ever going to offer her, if only on a subconscious level. And that meant it was time to go.

 

“Finally, Harry,” she quipped with a faint smile, seeming almost like her old self. “Something we can both agree upon. Don’t tell John until after I leave. I would hate for the big lug to show up and spoil everything and get himself killed in the process. I’ll need you both to pick up Sameen, she’ll need you. The address has already been sent to your phone via text.”

 

Root stopped a moment and looked at him with a look of hesitant resignation, much like the one she’d given him in the hotel after Perez’s rigged election, only somehow this time it had more meaning because she was about to make a self-fulfilling prophecy of the words she’d said to him that day about sacrifice.

 

“Thank you for taking me into your merry band of misfits, Harry. It’s been a fun ride.”

 

With a final, somber smirk, she moved towards the stairs in earnest and was at the foot of the stairway before Harold could bring himself to speak up again.

 

“Ms. Groves—Root—please don’t do this. We’ll find another way. We’ll…”

 

But Root wasn’t listening. She continued up the stairs and out into the freezing New York night before Harold could find the right words.

 

 

O8O8O8O8O

**iii. exchanging pieces**

 

The address she’d been given ended up being a proxy for the actual meeting place, which was a parking garage connected to a condemned office complex in Brooklyn. The string of black SUVS—looking like a funeral parade following a hearse—gave the location away almost immediately.

 

She hadn’t heard from the Machine on the entire trip over and to be honest, Root was a little disappointed. She knew she’d chosen Shaw over her god and that would have consequences, but truth be told, Root couldn’t imagine a time when the Machine would forsake her completely and it was more than a little heart wrenching.  

 

A group of dark clad bodies were waiting for her when she arrived. Root saw a flash of blonde hair and recognized Martine among them immediately, fidgeting and on edge, reaching for but never pulling her gun from its hip holster as she waited. The loathsome woman looked up at the sounds of approaching footsteps and smirked.

 

“The last time I saw you,” Martine announced, eyeing Root up and down like she was an enticing meal. “You were locked in an elevator, screaming. I had hoped you’d be stupid enough to come back for revenge. Glad I was right.”

 

Root stiffened, one of her hands instinctively moving to the grip of the handgun she had tucked against her back, but her fingers stilled of their own accord when she heard another familiar but no less detested voice break the tension between them.

 

“Now, now, Martine,” John Greer admonished materializing from seemingly nowhere. “There’s no reason to be rude. Ms. Groves is our guest today after all.”

 

The old man put his hands in the pockets of his expensive Italian suit and took a few confident steps in Root’s direction, never losing eye contact with her in that eerie way of his.

 

“To tell the truth, I was rather surprised when Samaritan informed me of your decision to surrender yourself.” He said, his gruff British accented voice grading on her nerves already, “it is the right decision, of course, I just hadn’t thought you’d give into reason so soon. No matter, let’s get started shall we?”

 

He smiled and Root felt her stomach twist and turn sickly. Up until this moment, this entire situation had seemed surreal—like it was happening to someone else, but now Root keenly felt herself as the key player at the center of a great drama and she found herself vainly hoping to sneak back off into the wings.

 

 _No_ , Root thought, _I have to do this for Sameen. I have to give her, her best chance. Nothing else matters._

Greer’s yellow smile widened, almost as if he knew what she was thinking and took great pleasure in her discomfort. The old man’s audacity made her angry and that anger made Root brave.

 

“If you’ve harmed one hair on Sameen’s head—” she started.

 

“Be rest assured, Ms. Groves, Ms. Shaw is alive and quite well and more than ready to begin.”

 

Root heard it then: the distinct and violent sound of booted feet kicking against the metal roof of a car’s trunk and she smirked despite herself.

 

That was her little firecracker alright.

 

“Are you ready to begin, Ms. Groves or have you changed your mind?” Greer asked, smile falling slightly, “I’m not sure how much longer our dear Sameen will be able to indulge your indecision.”

 

“Don’t,” Root warned lowly, “call her that.”

 

“As you wish,” Greer conceded, his smile vanishing completely, bored now at being kept waiting. “Enough of these games. Martine.”

 

The deadly blonde resurfaced in Root’s line of vision immediately after being called like the good attack dog that she was, gun digging into Root’s spine as Martine’s other hand removed the HK USP compact that had been one of Shaw’s favorites tucked into the waistband of the hacker’s black skinny jeans.

 

The cool steel pressing into her skin had given Root a sense of security in the days since Shaw’s sacrifice, but with it gone, she felt like even less of the person she knew herself to be. The heavy thud of booted feet came again, this time louder and fiercer and somehow, that defiant sound filled Root with confidence and warmth at the same time.

 

Root was startled out of her reverie by the feeling of unwanted hands patting her pockets and sliding tightly down her legs and into her boots. After what felt like way too long, Martine rose back to her feet.

 

“She’s not carrying anything else, not even a phone,” the blonde said, looking directly at Greer.

 

“How very pedestrian you are, Ms. Groves. I have to say that does come as quite a surprise and not a good one. Now, it’s time to meet your new god.”

 

“Wait,” Root protested, unmoving. “I want to see Sameen first otherwise how else do I know you’ll be true to your word when I’m gone?”

 

“A gentleman is always true to his word, Ms. Groves, but very well,” Greer said, nodding his head to Martine before turning his back on her dismissively. “I suppose I can grant you one last request. Make it quick, however. I grow tired of your stalling.”

 

Root had to struggle not to shudder when Martine grabbed her by the elbow and guided the brunette over to the only other car present in the complex that wasn’t an SUV. The back of the car jumped suddenly up again from another vicious blow being dealt from the woman locked within. The hacker braced herself. She felt cold all of a sudden and she didn’t understand why.

 

What was it? Fear? Or dread at what sort of state she might find Shaw in?

 

The last few days, her unfortunate hunt with John through Maple and then the subsequent solitary hunts where she’d done nothing but maim and brutalize anyone who had even the remotest of connections to Decima’s operations at the Exchange that day and by extension, all of those moments in between where she’d felt hopeful and sad and scared and desperate and angry came flashing back into her mind.

 

What if the same thing happened here? What if this wasn’t really Sameen? What if it was all some elaborate trick to get her to surrender herself? To get her to hope again only to have that hope ripped away?

 

The grip on Root’s elbow tightened and she jerked away.

 

“If you even think about trying anything, I’ll kill you both myself,” Martine said, her tone as calm as if she were cleaning one of her many guns.

 

A guard bent down to unlock the trunk. The top popped open and flew upward and the large man who’d opened it wobbled on his feet, then fell, the sound of his teeth snapping together from a hard uppercut riveting the attention of everyone in the place on the small woman starting to sit up in newly opened space.

 

“Next time you throw someone in the back of a car, you might want to bind their wrists with something they can’t break out of, asshole,” Shaw snarled, leaning against the lip of the trunk and breathing hard.

 

Root felt this explosive shockwave of emotion expanding from the middle of her chest out into the rest of her body like the turbulent burst of kinetic energy billowing out from the hypocenter of a detonated bomb. Everything she’d been carrying around with her and trying to suppress since Shaw had thrown her back into that elevator and run headlong out into certain death was bombarding her senses and grappling for expression.

 

Shaw looked basically the same as she had before.

 

Her clothes were different. They’d stuffed her into a dark pair of ill-fitting scrubs and her hair was loose, as if either they hadn’t wanted to bother with helping her put it up or Sameen _wouldn’t_ let them close enough to her to do it. She was favoring her right side, which given the bullet wounds she’d taken in the upper chest and hip, made sense and she also seemed somehow thinner, but no less formidable. Her skin was the same invariable shade of tan and her dark eyes gleamed with the familiar defiant light Root loved.

 

Root didn’t know whether to cry or smile. She wanted to race over and pull her wonderfully grumpy Sameen into a hug the other woman would no doubt strangle her for, but her muscles wouldn’t move. Shaw shifted, as if trying to find the best way to lower herself from the vehicle without reopening her wounds, but she stopped when she looked up and saw Root.

 

The hacker was sure out of all of the people Sameen had been expecting to see with all of these Decima goons, Root was the last one and that final ounce of disbelief on Shaw’s face—that ironic twist of whatever force had shuffled their lives around into an aimless Rubik’s cube of messed up moments where they found themselves in situations like this one—caused Root to smile her first honest smile in what felt like years.

 

There were tears in Root’s eyes and an open adoration in her gaze and for a second it was as if she and Sameen weren’t surrounded by a host of enemy operatives who would as easily kill them as look at them.

 

They just…were. And best of all, they were together again.

 

“Root, what are you doing here?” Sameen asked, her tone lacking the recognizable deflections of anger or annoyance, just confusion.

 

“Hello to you too, sweetie,” Root said, trying to keep up the charade of confidence in her voice, but it broke anyway. “Did you miss me?”

 

“Collect Ms. Shaw and take the Interface,” Greer said, nodding to the car and wisely keeping his distance. “We don’t have all day.”

 

Time accelerated then, almost as if a button had been pushed on some invisible computer.

 

Root felt her arms being bent and shoved behind her back where Martine zip-tied them together at the wrists. Shaw moved to get up, but before she could she was lifted by two tall operatives out of the back of the trunk and hoisted into the air as she struggled, yelling at them to get their hands off of her if they wanted to live. Root felt herself being pushed and pulled in different directions and was vaguely aware that her feet were moving, complying with the forces she wasn’t paying attention to because she only had eyes for Sameen and where they were taking her.

 

The last thing Root saw before her head was pushed inside of the backseat of the car was Shaw looking over at her and fighting as three operatives worked to tie her to one of the support beams in the garage with a thick climbing rope. Root felt the air leave her lungs and knew she was shouting, but she didn’t know what she was saying.

 

She broke away from her captors and tried to get out of the car, but a sharp pain shot through her body as a syringe was jammed into her carotid artery. The quick beating of her heart treacherously delivered the sedative through her system and Root felt her muscles go limp. Someone dragged her back into the vehicle and everything became hazy.

 

Root heard sirens in the distance as the car sped away and knew that Harold had indeed told John about the exchange and he had brought Lionel with them. They would arrive soon and free Sameen and it would have all been worth it.

 

It had to have been worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> “I repeat, that the first and main difficulty in making a positional exchange sacrifice is a psychological caution: after all, you have to give up a rook for a minor piece. The second difficulty is that the exchange is given up when this is not forced by circumstances. Therefore you must anticipate beforehand, in good time, how events will develop and take the necessary measures.” - Tigran Petrosian, World chess champion 1963-1969


End file.
